In 2011, the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District voted to begin fluoridating water for about 850,000 customers in and around San Jose. Anti-fluoride activists grumbled but realized they didn't have the resources to take their fight to the public.

That's sure not what happened in Portland, which once again showed that this far northwest corner of the country is willing to go where other parts of the country rarely tread.

Activists packed the City Council chambers to protest the decision to go ahead with fluoridation and then collected more than 40,000 signatures in a month to place the issue on the ballot. And then, putting together a campaign organization on the fly, they won in a walk -- despite being outspent three to one.

Whether we're talking about how to fight tooth decay or insisting that someone else pump our gas, Oregonians' fierce independence and easy access to a Wild West system of direct democracy creates a different civic culture here.

Time and again, the political and business establishment in Oregon has learned it doesn't always get to call the shots.

For decades, the sensible and sober middle-ground leaders and analysts explained why Oregon should include a sales tax as part of its revenue mix just like 45 other states. Nine times, Oregon voters said no -- including in 1985 when the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor aired a joint ad urging Oregonians to vote yes.

That time, nearly 78 percent of the voters told them to take a hike. And, for better or for worse, thanks to the initiative system, the voters had the ultimate say.

Oregon was the first state to approve doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill and the first to send every registered voter a ballot in the mail. Heck, we were even the first to use the initiative.

Of course, voters in Tuesday's elections weren't always tossing the wisdom of their elected leaders aside. Most of the requested money measures around the state were approved and it should be noted that 39 percent of Portland voters stuck with mainstream scientific sentiment on fluoride. But, more than in other states, Oregonians are quick to turn to the ballot.

"Our direct democracy indulges the peculiarities endemic to Portland and to Oregon," said Pat McCormick, president of the City Club of Portland and a longtime political consultant who has worked on numerous ballot measures.

McCormick, who generally works for establishment figures, watched the fluoride debate with a bit of chagrin. Five times, he said, the club has examined the issue and has always concluded that fluoridating the water supply is a safe and effective way to combat cavities.

In much of the country, fluoride is a fringe topic. Overall, figures from the Centers for Disease Control show about 72 percent of residents in the U.S. receive fluoridated water.

But opponents had plenty of fervor in Portland, where alternative health care is popular and there is no shortage of people willing to do their own Internet research on dense topics.

They quickly put together a campaign team headed by Kristen Robison, who owns a jewelry business but says volunteer work is her real passion. She said one of the first things they did was drain most of their bank account on lawn signs.

"We wanted to let people know early on that their neighbor feels this way ... that this wasn't a tinfoil hat conspiracy," she explained.

Like many of the political movements that swirl up in Oregon, this was one of those bar-scene-in-Star-Wars moments when unlikely allies come together. The Sierra Club and the free-market Cascade Policy Institute joined in. Loren Parks, the Nevada businessman who owns an Aloha medical equipment company, kicked in $50,000 for radio ads.

Parks generally tilts at government spending and taxes, but he also helped bankroll the death-with-dignity ballot measure back in 1994.

The anti-fluoride campaign also had something else big going for it: the intense and complicated relationship that Oregonians have to their surrounding landscape.

Portland's water is its own famous brand, coming from the pristine Bull Run watershed and marketed as one of the purest and least-treated municipal water supplies in the country.

"There is this connection we feel with our own natural resources," said former City Commissioner Mike Lindberg, who campaigned against fluoridation. "We just love our pure water."

Not surprisingly, fluoride opponents focused on that with lawn signs and ads urging voters to keep chemicals out of their water, although supporters pointed out there are already chemicals used to treat the water. And when some craft brewers joined the opposition because of their own fears over water quality, it was like the perfect Portland combo plate.

In short, it's the kind of campaign that might not have been so powerful in a city where voters are less inclined to drink water out of the tap.

Political appeals to Oregonians' sense of place have long been powerful in Oregon. It led the state to pioneer the first bottle-deposit law, protect the beaches for public use and impose strict statewide land-use zoning to combat sprawl.

That doesn't mean Oregonians' independence won't push issues another way. In 2004, voters turned against staunch supporters of those land-use controls by approving a property rights initiative compensating landowners for loss of development rights.

We may have a strong "lifestyle environmentalism," said Portland consultant Jake Weigler, "but we also have a strong libertarian streak that is somewhat skeptical of governmental action."